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| Spoiler warning. If you want to remain ignorant of Elder Scrolls plot twists... for some reason... don't read on. |
My first character was fun, but because I went wherever and did whatever seemed good at the time, she ran out of skills before maxing out her attributes which left me kinda frustrated. But then I installed the Vile Lair plug-in and found the book Manifesto Cyrodiil Vampyrum, and then I had an answer. It didn't seem very realistic that one person could end up head of every major guild in Cyrodiil; after the first one it didn't feel like playing a character anymore, it felt like filling out a test sheet before you hand it in. But the manifesto held the answer, calling all vampires to "devote your pursuits to the procurement of influence, political and otherwise." That's what kind of character could "realistically" become head of all guilds: a vampire.
And so Selene was born. I deliberately made her a Breton because they were game-breakers back then, I set out to craft the ultimate character. And with care, patience and a little help from UESP, I did it. It's not easy to isolate individual skills in-game (you tend to use Block plus whichever weapon and armour skills you're currently using at the same time, obviously), but I managed to level up my skills in such a way that they'd trickle down to maximum bonuses to my attributes – levelling pre-Skyrim was nerdy and complicated, kids, but it did mean that it was possible to build a perfect character.
Well, maybe not perfect, but I got damn close: Selene emerged from the process a virtual demigod. I took her through all the various questlines – including catching vampirism from our old friend Vicente Valtieri (I wanted it to be from someone who mattered) – and at the end was Archmage of the Mage's Guild, Master of the Fighter's Guild, Grey Fox, Grand Champion of the Arena, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Champion of Cyrodiil and, thanks to mods both legit and fan-made, a pirate queen and Countess of Kvatch as well. These disparate themes were woven together by the unifying vampire narrative – she was an evil chessmaster putting on an act for her comrades, using the political disruption of the Oblivion Crisis to end up head of every major faction in the province. Chancellor Ocato might've been nominally in charge, but like Octavian, she was the one doing the actual paperwork; his power depended entirely on what she was signing, and whether she chose to tell him.
Selene would stave off existential boredom by keeping herself too busy to think; tearing all over the province on her demon horse, spending a day at the Arcane University here, then a day at the Chorrol Fighters Guild HQ, sneaking out at night to steal shit in the Grey Cowl, bringing the good news back to the Cheydinhal Sanctuary... and, on her days off, ruling the rebuilt city of Kvatch and visiting with her friend Janus Hassildor, who needed a friend after the sad demise of his wife. Since none of the factions in Skyrim seemed to talk to the others, it was likely only Ocato realised she was taking up multiple seats on the Elder Council, and there wasn't much he could do about it anyway. Heading several guilds at once wasn't actually illegal, it just hadn't been done before.
And so, I imagined, the years wore on. Then the decades. Then the centuries. It was a satisfying story, the evil-but-benevolent dictator rising to ultimate power through sheer hard work. When Skyrim came out, set 200 years later, it wasn't clear how that story was meant to fit in with the canon history, but she must've been out of power by the time of the Great War, or the Thalmor never would've made it to the Imperial City. So where was she? I don't know, but I hope she was with her consort Hassildor. No I don't think there was anything between them, but sometimes, on the very long days, I liked to think he wished there was.
I thought about resurrecting her for Skyrim, but instead decided to let sleeping dogs lie. And I was glad I did. The Skyrim game mechanic was so different it wasn't really possible to build up a "perfect" character anymore; now it was a question of optimisation. That led me to decide I'd make ten characters instead, one of each race, and with a little planning (via a text-only spreadsheet) I was able to work out a way to sample every weapon type, magic type and Standing Stone blessing as well. The result was five characters I was very fond of, a couple I was reasonably pleased with, and one that I really never got a handle on. Here are their stories in no particular order.
Hamilcar, the Redguard
One of the earliest was Hamilcar. His story was of a mercenary no longer welcome in his homeland and forced to make a living in Skyrim instead. He arrived in Dawnstar by ship with nothing but the sword at his side (this character was aided by the scimitar and clothes set lying under a boat just downshore from Dawnstar). He worked in the mines to make a start, sold the Quicksilver for phat cash and smelted the Iron to make his first set of armour. He had enough septims from the sale of Quicksilver to buy the leather he needed, and even a couple of Corundum ingots to make the Banded versions of the breastplate and shield.
Now equipped, he went out into the big bad world and started ganking bad guys for money. And of course ended up where all such people end up, a member of the Companions, meaning this was the character who earned all the Werewolf traits as well. As a Redguard from the home of sword-singers, I was pleased that starting scimitar was the only sword he needed to carry – with his Smithing skill sharpening it, it was competitive all the way through the game. He also ended up using the Targe of the Blooded as his shield, because it looked wicked, and ended up the only one with a full Blocking perk tree – cannoning into bad guys and sending them flying was pretty fun.
I was still working out exactly who would have which Standing Stone blessing, because although Skyrim made them changeable, I wanted to treat them like the birthsigns in Oblivion and Morrowind (yes, I know you level up quicker using the Guardian Stones, but with ten characters I was hardly out to save time, was I?). It took a while but eventually I hit on giving him the Lady Stone; the bonuses to Health and Stamina regen were perfect for his trade, and in the fluff Redguards are prone to knightly orders. So, you know, chivalry, Companions, courtly romance... Lady Stone. It all sort of gelled, and I got a real kick out of what Bethesda had done: in the Elder Scrolls, your Knight in Shining Armour is probably a black man.
Zamagh, the Orc
Another favourite was this greenskin, because he had one of the best character arcs of all. Zamagh arrived in Skyrim from Cyrodiil, having been kicked out of wherever he was living before because he was too old. By their own custom, Orcs who reach a certain age without becoming chief, taking a wife and having children seek a glorious death while they can still die on their feet: Zamagh was expected to do this, but in his heart he knew it wasn't over. He wasn't too old; the strength of his body and the fire in his heart still burned strong. So he sought a land in turmoil where he'd be tested every minute, and set about settting himself up. I gave him the Steed Stone that makes you fast and strong because it seemed right for him to make light of burdens; and inspired by the Orcish Berserker Rage ability, I decided he should never defend, only attack, and put all his perk points into wielding warhammers and dual-wielding axes (the only time I dual-wielded, and it worked out pretty well; bleeding damage stacks up pretty fast when you're hacking like a mad bastard).
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| Full credit to Bethesda for the face algorithms too, this was one of the best I did: that brow had a slight hint of weary melancholy, until he put his helmet on, when he suddenly looked pissed off. |
Zamagh was accepted into the strongholds, though never as a member, and then one day, it happened: he completed a quest and was granted Volendrung, the weapon of his lord Malacath. He known it the whole time! He wasn't too old, he was Malacath's chosen – spurned and ostracised even by other Orcs! With that weapon on his back, he was able to ask for the hand of a stronghold princess, and set up a home with her – three actually, since he became my Hearthfire house-builder (it would've been awesome if he'd been able to build his own Orc stronghold; I know there are mods for this, but I kept modding to a minimum with Skyrim because it took up so much more disc space than Oblivion). That's what success looked like for Zamagh: rejected by the strongholds of Cyrodiil, he became one of the biggest land barons in Skyrim. That he was also a close-combat monster was just a bonus.
Elenirya, the High Elf
I was surprised to find I don't have any screenshots of her, but that kinda shows the problem with her; she was just another a generic mage. She ended up Archmage of the College of Winterhold, of course, and it was fun to play a pure mage, but she wasn't that memorable. Except for one thing: High Elves have lots of magic but are especially vulnerable to magic, which I turned up to eleven by giving her the Apprentice Stone, which does the exact same thing. Doubled up on magicka and weakness to magicka, she pumped out spells like the motherfucking Chernobyl of Skyrim, but she died to harsh language, stiff breezes and sharp looks. You don't want to know what happened if a dragon showed up. Most of the time she could stay out of trouble by spawning a pair of Dremora Lords as meatshields, but it was really, really important she had those meatshields.
The premise I had in mind for her was why-oh-why would the Thalmor let one of their best and brightest defect to Skyrim?/Oh right because she's lesbian, but I couldn't get her to marry either Faralda or Nirya. Too bad.
Delas Reveni, the Dark Elf
The basic idea behind my Dark Elf was duality: culturally arrogant yet under Ulfric's boot, a proud people lacking a homeland to be proud of, great warriors and yet great wizards, good people who were former slavers. This duality led me to the spellsword path – steel vs magicka – as well as the duality of Restoration vs Destruction. Casting fireballs one minute, healing spells the next, I decided he'd be my Restoration-focused character (it wasn't until after him I realised how damn useful the Restoration tree could be). Since he'd mostly be using his magic in combat, I gave him the Atronach Stone so he could soak up some of that damage and the penalty to the recharge rate wouldn't be such a worry (so officially he was a mage that wore heavy armour rather than a warrior that could use magic). Since he needed to free his people, of course he joined the Legion to overthrow Ulfric, and in the game of course he succeeded and bought Hjerim and had a family and lived happily ever after in the free city of Windhem.
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| I loved the Dawnguard armour: equal parts steel and heavy raincoat, which seems appropriate for vampire hunters. |
In the grand narrative in my head, though, that never happened: the Stormcloaks win the civil war in my canon, and he was wounded at the Siege of Whiterun, playing no further part in the war. Instead, he ended up a broken man, drifting, until he was suddenly recruited by the Dawnguard. This was a huge bit of luck, because though I didn't know it when making the character, the Dawnguard expansion had undead-only Sun Damage spells – spells that belonged to the School of Restoration! He arrived at the Dawnguard already a master of Restoration, the perfect character for vampire hunting, I had a blast burning vampires alive with magical sunlight and completing the Dawnguard questline. He ended up one of my favourite characters of all, and it happened purely by serendipity.
Angelique, the Breton
Angelique was a character who started out as one thing and ended up another, and was all the better for it. She was supposed to be the evil counterweight to Elenirya, a pure mage who conjured undead instead of Daedra, blasted lightning instead of fire, used the Star of Azura in its Black form, etc, etc. I liked the idea that they had classes together at the College and were bitter rivals until Angelique ragequit and went off to do her own thing.
In the event, what she became was a fucking medieval fantasy urban guerrilla. She was a Breton, so it made sense that she ended up siding with the Reachmen around Markarth, who in the fluff were mongrel half-bred Bretons anyway. When she helped the King in Rags escape Cydna Mine she inherited a full set of Reach armour, which she wore from then on. In a nearby dungeon she got her hands on the Eye of Melka, a Reach-style staff. So slowly she morphed away from being all about lightning bolts and necromancy and became more interested in sneaking and casting spell traps (the IEDs of Skyrim) to liberate the Reach from Nordic rule. She wound up with a lot of misused perk points, sure, but thanks to Quiet Casting by the end of the game the Markarth city guards could barely even roll over in bed without setting off a Fire Rune. Her Conjuration skills, built up while reanimating the dead, were put to good use summoning Bound Bows instead ("Weapons? No, of course I'm not carrying any weapons...") and the Soul Trap perk on bound weapons proved a handy way of filling Black Soul Gems.
In short, she was the perfect guerrilla terrorist; married to Ainethach for respectability, but living in Vlindrel Hall while he looked after his mine, she was a respected member of her community who happened to be working diligently to tear it down. Her necromancy, I now knew, was actually smoothing the way towards becoming a Hagraven (but again, minimal modding, so that finale never happened). Finally, her belated stealth abilities led me to one of the most hilarious tactics of the whole frickin' game: sneaking into a crowd of Markarth guards and using the Ritual Stone power to reanimate their dead comrades – all their dead comrades – then skedaddling as the chaos started. Oh, the joy, the sheer joy of them hacking their own late friends to pieces! When they tell you playing outside used to be more fun than video games, believe me, that's only because video games were shitty back then.
Kha-Azir, the Khajiit
Your standard Khajiiti thief: I even had him walk around in Fine Boots early on because I couldn't resist the pun. He was supposed to be under the Tower Stone – you know, born with doors unlocking under his touch, of course he grew up to be a thief – but when I got sick of the Tower Unlock prompt every time I went to pick a lock, I went back to the Thief Stone just for sanity's sake. Despite that, I ended up having a lot of fun with him: in any Elder Scrolls, the Thieves Guild questline is always the coolest.
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| Only gamers know how much work went into this trophy cabinet. |
What really worked for this guy was that nearly all the thievery happens in the four major cities, so you can get there using the fast-travel carriages. That means you never need walk around the game world, never meet the rough characters and giant spiders it contains, and so never build up your weapons skills. That means as you level up and the baddies get tougher, you're left completely helpless in a fight and have no option but to leg it or hide – you know, like a thief.
Sleethea, the Argonian
Another fairly standard character, the cold-blooded Argonian assassin (har-har. Argonians are clearly warm-blooded or Skyrim would kill them to death). She was born under the Serpent Stone more for the "destiny unwritten" fluff than the paralysing-poison ability, which was very rarely used. Sleethea ended up being interesting and fun because she herself was roleplaying. From the start I dressed her up as just another civvie, getting Alchemy lessons from Lami and Arcadia and paying for them by chopping wood, but this was her harmless disguise; she was my Dark Brotherhood character. So in between all the interesting stealth-murder the Brotherhood has you do, I married her to Scouts-Many-Marshes and made her sleep in the Argonian Assemblage with the rest of them, undercover, unsuspected. I gave her one of the Dawnguard's Steel Crossbows (because a crossbow is just the weapon of an assassin, isn't it?) but didn't work much on her archery, since it was just a means to deliver poison. I also fully charged the Ebony Blade, which was one of the best decisions of the whole character: not only is Mephala the perfect daedra for a professional killer, the Blade's health-absorption properties gave her a fighting chance ob those rare occasions she had to stand up for herself, and the process of befriending and slaughtering key people to charge the blade felt absolutely in character.
She is of course the one who assassinated the Emperor Titus Mede II, which in my headcanon was the event that kicked off the whole Skyrim civil war. Then she moved Scouts-Many-Marshes to their new home, Windstad Manor, where she spends her days breeding fishes and growing deadly ingredients to grind into poisons while her husband wonders what the hell her real deal is.
Thaewen, the Wood Elf
Thaewen was my last character, and she never really took off. By headcanon she was in Skyrim to stir up some trouble, keep the province burning for her Thalmor masters. In the early game she had a Native American theme going; Mohawk, Fur Armour, a steel war axe to represent a Tomahawk, sneaking around shooting shit dead like a good Wood Elf should. I gave her the cannibalistic Ring of Namira to represent the Wood Elf custom of eating those they kill (it's in the fluff, look it up). But this weak build didn't last long, and after that she never really had a theme. I wanted to make her an Agent, a stealthy intel operative to be used by the Blades for assassination and sabotage, but the Blades only seemed to have use for front-line tanks (related: even in Oblivion I was disappointed there was no Blades Light Armour. Dressing like a ninja in blue-and-gold Blades silk would've been frickin' sweet). So she gravitated to the Dawnguard, then contracted vampirism, then joined the Thieves Guild and ended up finding her niche wearing Nightingale Armour, the permanent guardian of Nightingale Hall. I originally gave her the Shadow Stone (I know, how the hell do you see a shadow in the constellations?) which grants an invisibility spell, but given both the Twilight Sepulcher and Vampirism give you the same thing it ended up being redundant. On the plus side the Nightingale Armour bonus to Illusion magic complemented the Vampiric bonus to the same, but yeah, a muddled story that didn't really go anywhere.
Viggo, the Nord
At last, my prime character, and my favourite. Yes, a complete Marty Stu but at least I admit it; I wish I looked like him, and I wish I could go around having as much fun as him, ganking dragons and looting stuff. I gave him the Lord Stone, because the extra armour and magic resistance would be useful when fighting dragons, which he did, a lot. A true Nord, Viggo Dragonborn stopped Alduin, visited Sovngarde, joined the Stormcloaks and freed Skyrim from the Elf-bowing cowards in the Imperial City.
All pretty standard stuff; where it got interesting was with the Dragonborn expansion. I wanted Viggo to be the one to slay a Legendary Dragon and so earn the Steam Achievement (I got all the Achievements, by the way), but that required a ridiculously high level that was almost the maximum you could have. Since he didn't have any magic skills (the Voice stood in for his magic), I went through and reset all his skills and levelled them up again. That meant switching from Light to Heavy Armour – the standard Light Armours looked so cool and Nordic, I thought the Nords just have to be the one people that sends its warriors into battle in Light Armour: when Sovngarde awaits you're not scared of dying, they breed fast (Skyrim is the only province that's overrun with children) and they move fast even as an army; no wonder the Thalmor see them as their number one strategic threat. When I switched to Heavy Armour, however, the Dragonbone Armour surprised me by being kinda badass, and I loved the serrated Dragonbone Greatsword, which became his primary weapon from then on because awesome.
Anyway, killed the Legendary Dragon, did the Dragonborn quest, got feels from re-visiting Morrowind, then at the climax Hermaeus Mora (the driving force behind the whole quest; think a miniature Cthulhu, all gribbly things with tentacles) reveals I've finally become his greatest instrument? That's when it hit me; I knew how to end this story.
Too late, Viggo realised he'd accumulated too much power for one man. Too late, he realised unparalleled martial might + a knack for Dragon Shouts added up to someone who could remake the world however he saw fit. And now this godlike individual was caught in the coils of Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Fate. There was only one way to beat him, and it wasn't by fighting; you can't fight fate. Any action, no matter how well-intentioned, would now be in His service. There was only one way to stop it: going totally passive. So, with sorrow in his heart, he climbed the Throat of the World one last time, joined Paarthurnax at the summit, donned the robes of the Greybeards (courtesy of some console commands from me), and submitted to the tyranny of the Paarthurnax's Way of the Voice.
And somewhere in Apocrypha, Hermaeus Mora screamed a Big No.
Damn, that was a story I liked playing out.
Mietta Sergianus, the Imperial
I think it's time they changed "Imperials" to "Cyrodiilics" or something since they don't really have an empire anymore, but ahem: born under the Lover Stone, because she'd have so many disparate skills to master (and also because it fills in for sleeping, which is handy for a character who'll be up all night), Mietta's headcanon story was an ambitious legate who requested duty in Skyrim to give her career a leg-up, then found out every ambitious legate in the Legions had thought the same thing and swarmed to the place like it was a bathtub drain. Ignored and looking for something to do with herself, she made herself available to the Jarl of Solitude, undertaking a dangerous and ultimately very important quest to cast the ghost of Queen Potema out of the catacombs. Except that on her way through she contracted Porphyric Haemophilia (no really, she did – I was so chuffed when the game came to the party like that), and, not recognising the symptoms, discovered too late what it meant. So began her new life in undeath, night eternal.
Obviously she became my candidate for the Volkihar questline, walking off with Auri-El's bow and Harkon's Sword. I like to imagine she and Delas knew each other in the Legion in the old days, former comrades gone full circle to bitterest enemies. I also like to imagine she became a surrogate daughter to Lord Harkon after Serana defected to the Dawnguard in the Delas story (again, I didn't know it while making the character, but she bore a striking resemblance to Serana). After a time as Harkon's wrist-hawk, she had the good fortune to be visiting Valeria in the Soul Cairn the day the Dawnguard stormed and sacked the castle. Mietta emerged days later to find the place empty and silent, and thought to herself: "What splendid luck. I am now the Mistress of Castle Volkihar and Queen of the Vampires by default, without having to do it myself, and it could be decades before the Dawnguard recover from their complacency and suspect anybody has moved back in. And by then I'll be ready."
So began her final form, which... heh, I said I wasn't going to resurrect Selene because perfection is impossible in Skyrim, but that's not strictly true. It's not impossible, just insanely time-consuming. Perfection in Oblivion was a matter of getting all the numbers up to 100; in Skyrim it's a matter of skill perks. Those are the limiting factor and end up defining your character. You get one perk each time you level up, and the average character will cease at roughly Level 50. For an especially developed character, maybe 60 or 70. If you're an autist who absolutely must grind up every skill, the standard game runs out halfway through Level 81.
Do you know how many skill perks there actually are? Two-hundred and fifty-three.
Obviously, even though the expansions technically allow you to level up indefinitely, there was no way I was going to grind that far up manually. Using the console I artificially gave her experience in all skills, then reset them and maxed them out again. From memory, I had to do this five or six times over for each skill, but it was worth it: in the space of an hour or so I'd made it to Level 253, had every single perk and so simulated multiple centuries of living and learning in Skyrim. The Vampire Queen was an out-and-out demigod; it took minutes of sustained attack for enemies to even make a dent in her massive health bar, and she could brush them aside any time with a couple of spells – if she could be bothered, for as a veteran of the Soul Cairn, she had summoning spells most necromancers had never even dreamed of. She was so powerful that she wasn't actually that much fun to play: after a couple of weeks I finally got sick of exploring the limits of the crafting system and finally uninstalled the game.
I still have their save files as a memento, even though I have no plans to play Skyrim ever again. I'm waiting for TES VI, whenever it comes out – hurry up with finish Fallout 4, would you Bethesda? – and have no interest in playing ESO, because playing an Elder Scrolls game with other people completely defeats the purpose for me. Besides, I have unfinished business with Morrowind.
But how cool is it that we can take this game engine, this thing which, really, boils down to killing things and taking their stuff – and use them to build narratives. Good narratives, some of them: the Orc who believed in himself when the world said he was too old; the Breton struggling to free her people and return them to their land; the Dark Elf who couldn't save his people, but found meaning again saving everyone; the Nord hero who made himself an un-hero to spite a god.
These are things like Terry Pratchett used to write about: the universe is actually a bunch of spinning rocks livened up with a handful of chemical and nuclear reactions. There's certainly nothing resembling meaning in all that; grind the thing down, sieve it all out as finely as you like and you won't find even the tiniest grain of something you could call "a story." We have to add that ourselves, indeed, can't help adding that ourselves, because it's what humans do. Because if we don't, awful things can happen. Because if we don't, what's the bloody point?
Hence all 11 stories above.
Hence also all god-knows-how-many stories in the Bible, including the ones in Daniel.
The universe has no inherent meaning my friends. And isn't that wonderful? We get to make our own.
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